Sunday, 7 August 2011

Every now and again, during the process, there were stray conversations about who might play Barney – the ice-cream seller in the park who was to replace Bert as the leading male character in the film.

One such exchange was quintessentially ‘Hollywood’, by which I mean that it was so typical of Moviedom that it may easily have betokened a genuine cast-iron idea or nothing more than a wild and passing whim...

Anyway, this is what happened...

I'm taken to lunch by a Studio Executive at a ritzy restaurant on Rodeo Drive and, during the meal, I am suddenly confronted with a totally unexpected question:

“So," begins the Exec, "is it essential for Barney to be ‘Caucasian’?”

I look blank…

“I mean, does he have to bewhite?” he translates.

My failure to instantly respond is, of course, not because I don’t know the meaning of the word 'Caucasian', but simply because I can’t imagine why I am being asked…

For one thing, black people in Edwardian London were far and few between and whilst it was just possible, perhaps, to find a black footman serving in some big household,meeting a black ice-cream seller in a London park would have been an extremely unlikely occurrence.

As it turned out, Mary Poppins never did come back - not, at least, on film - but if she had, then it's anyone's guess whether we might also we have seen Captain Eo selling strawberry ices in Cherry Tree Lane…